Protocols of systematic reviews and meta-analyses allow for planning and documentation of review methods, act as a guard against arbitrary decision making during review conduct, enable readers to assess for the presence of selective reporting against completed reviews, and, when made publicly available, reduce duplication of efforts and potentially prompt collaboration. Evidence documenting the existence of selective reporting and excessive duplication of reviews on the same or similar topics is accumulating and many calls have been made in support of the documentation and public availability of review protocols. Several efforts have emerged in recent years to rectify these problems, including development of an international register for prospective reviews (PROSPERO) and launch of the first open access journal dedicated to the exclusive publication of systematic review products, including protocols (BioMed Central's Systematic Reviews). Furthering these efforts and building on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines, an international group of experts has created a guideline to improve the transparency, accuracy, completeness, and frequency of documented systematic review and meta-analysis protocols-PRISMA-P (for protocols) 2015. The PRISMA-P checklist contains 17 items considered to be essential and minimum components of a systematic review or meta-analysis protocol. This PRISMA-P 2015 Explanation and Elaboration paper provides readers with a full understanding of and evidence about the necessity of each item as well as a model example from an existing published protocol. This paper should be read together with the PRISMA-P 2015 statement. Systematic review authors and assessors are strongly encouraged to make use of PRISMA-P when drafting and appraising review protocols. Various international organizations such as the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) regularly require and publish protocols. However, outside of such organizations, few protocols are published in traditional journals and most reports of completed reviews (89%) do not mention working from a protocol 1 (2014 update under way). Many experts have called for improved documentation and availability of review protocols. In response, experts (some of whom are authors on this document) launched an international, prospective register for systematic review protocols (PROSPERO, www.crd.york.ac.

Background: The treatment for infected tibial bone defects can be a great challenge for the orthopaedic surgeon. This meta-analysis was conducted to compare the safety and efficacy between bone transport (BT) and the acute shortening technique (AST) in the treatment of infected tibial bone defects. Methods: A literature survey was conducted by searching the PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases together with the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and the Wanfang database for articles published up to 9 August 2019. The modified Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS) was adapted to evaluate the bias and risks in each eligible study. The data of the external fixation index (EFI), bone grafting, bone and functional results, complications, bone union time and characteristics of participants were extracted. RevMan v.5.3 was used to perform relevant statistical analyses. Standard mean difference (SMD) was used for continuous variables and relative risk (RR) for the binary variables. All of the variables included its 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Five studies, including a total of 199 patients, were included in the study. Statistical significance was observed in the EFI (SMD = 0.

Background The treatment for infected tibial bone defects can be a great challenge for the orthopaedic surgeon. This meta-analysis was conducted to compare the efficacy and safety between bone transport (BT) and acute shortening technique (AST) in the treatment of infected tibial bone defects.Materials and Methods A literature survey was conducted by searching the PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase together with China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang database for articles published as of August 9, 2019. NOS (Newcastle-Ottawa scale) and Cochrane's risk of bias tool were adapted to evaluated the bias and risk of each eligible study. The data of external fixation index (EFI), bone grafting, bone and functional results, complications, bone union time and characteristics of participants were extracted. RevMan V.5.3 was used to perform relevant statistical analyses. Relative risk (RR) were used for the binary variables and standard mean difference (SMD) for continuous variable. Each variable included its 95% confidence interval (CI).Results 5 studies, including a total of 199 patients, were included in the meta-analysis. Statistical significance was observed in EFI (SMD = 0.63,95% CI:0.25,1.01,P=0.001) and Bone grafting (RR = 0.26,95%CI:0.15,0.46,P<0.00001), however, no significance was observed in bone union time (SMD = -0.02, 95% CI: -0.39, 0.35, P=0.92), bone results (RR = 0.97,95%CI:0.91,1.04,P=0.41),functional results (RR = 0.96,95%CI:0.86,1.08,P=0.50) and complication (RR = 0.76,95%CI:0.41,1.39,P=0.37).Conclusions AST is preferred on the aspect of minimizing treatment period, while BT is superior to AST for reducing bone grafting. Due to the limited number of trials, The meaning of this conclusion should be taken with caution for infected tibial bone defects.